The article examines the criminalisation of causing negative emotional states in others and pursues a principled response to the question under which conditions, in a liberal democratic society, it is legitimate to criminalise human conduct that leads to emotional distress in others. Its main aim is to develop an exploratory typology of different types of legally-relevant emotional distress, based on existing offences and informed by the criteria drawn from criminal law philosophy. Following the conceptual distinction between ‘harm’ and ‘offence’, a typology of legally relevant emotional distress ranging from simpler cases of distress through more in-depth offendedness and offence-plus-harm to states of emotional harm is presented. The article then discusses some ‘hard cases’, such as special vulnerabilities and the question of changing sensibilities through time. The repercussions of these changes for an effective and legitimate criminal justice as well as policy implications are addressed in the concluding section.

本文研究了在他人中造成负面情绪状态的犯罪行为，并对在自由民主社会中有条件将在他人中造成情绪困扰的人类行为定为犯罪是有道理的回应。它的主要目的是在现有犯罪的基础上，根据刑法哲学的标准，开发出各种类型的与法律相关的情感困扰的探索性类型学。继“伤害”和“犯罪”之间的概念区别之后，提出了与法律有关的情绪困扰的类型，从较简单的困扰案例到更深入的冒犯和犯罪加危害到情绪伤害状态，一应俱全。然后，文章讨论了一些“困难案例”，例如特殊漏洞和随着时间变化的敏感性问题。结论部分论述了这些变化对有效和合法的刑事司法的影响以及所涉政策问题。